New Castle Group, LLC

I am the single father of a child diagnosed with cancer in early 2022. As such I had no time to build or oversee this project myself and had to find a contractor to get this done for my family while I mostly lived in a hospital with my son who was fighting for his life. As such I turned to Angi’s list to help me find a contractor in May of 2022. In May or June of 2022 Mike with New Castle Group, LLC came to my house to see my project review everything I wanted for the purpose of putting together a bid for my project. After a call or two with him we agreed to hire him for the job at a total cost of $38,780.00 to build a deck extension, upper deck and deck cover for my home. On July 2022 he came to my home with a 1 page contract that was missing several details but he assured me these were small things and he would take care of it. I still wrote onto the contract a couple of the items that I thought were bigger cost items and decided to trust him on the rest as I really had to rely upon him to get everything right. He told me at that point that he would get a crew out after plans and permits were done and the project would be done in 2 to 3 weeks at most, I noted the contract said 4 weeks, he said that was worst case scenario. I gave him a check for $19,390.00 to get started. It took from there till I believe September to get his engineer out to my house to look over the job. Communication with Mike was slow but he would reply to my text eventually and I could usually reach him by phone. After several emails with schedule conflicts I was not able to be there but Mike was and he assured me he told the engineer everything I wanted for this deck design with post running along the front of the deck, the lower deck all one level from one end of the house to the other a private upper deck off the master bedroom with a dry under system over the hot tub spot of the new deck extension, a cover over the existing deck, hand rails could just match my existing deck, I wanted lights, ceiling fans, outlets, gutters, and a hard gas line to my grill I wanted built in and my gas fire pit on the deck. He said he had all that and not to worry. He just wanted me to look at the floor plan when it came to make sure I got the hot tub where I wanted it. I did that and we made a couple of little moves on placement of the hot tub and stairs at which point my wife and I said great lets get it done. At this point things started to get a little bit worrying as Mike did not have a crew out to my house to start work and communication was difficult. He was really slow to respond to text and hard to reach by phone. In October or early November 2022 a crew came out to the house and started to frame a deck cover, no ground work was done yet and no demo of an ADA access ramp where the deck extension was to be done, no piers were in, no pad for the hot tub was poured, no footers for the stairs were done and winter was nearly upon us where concrete could not be done. I then noticed that they were putting post in the middle of my deck and I stopped them, called Mike who told me that this was some kind of mistake as the post were going to be on the edge of the deck. I had several emails from this point with the engineer and cc’d Mike to try and get plans that were done with post where I wanted them. Ultimately, Mike told me that that engineer was causing him problems on several projects, and he had another guy who would redo plans for my deck but he was going to start it and build everything to code. I reluctantly agreed to this plan with Mike as he had all my money, and I had no choice but to follow his lead and hope things were going to get done right. Mike never got plans for what he did from there. At this point we were into late November 2022 and I had to leave for 10 days to my son’s Make a Wish trip. His daughter Rebecca Poage had taken over communication/project management and assured me things would be done while I was gone. Nothing happened and now it was snowing, I had holes in my deck for post that where going to be moved to the edge after inspection? And then he would get me plans from another engineer and reinspect the new post but he wanted to get through rough framing before more snow. I’m no expert but it seemed off, still I was mostly living at children’s hospital and had to trust him. He then somehow got a rough framing inspection done and wanted the additional $9,695.00 and swore he would be done in just 2 more weeks. At this point I was hopeful as he had 2 guys at my house for 2 or 3 days to get the framing done so I was gave him the additional check. He disappeared aging and no work happened. I would text and call him and his daughter for days. Id finally get a response and told they would have guys at my place on Thursday, Thursday would arrive and nobody was there. I would call and text and then after a week or two I was told someone would be there and then nobody would show up. After 2 months of this I thought this was never going to happen, I would call an attorney set up an appointment and then before I met with the attorney he would show up and work for 3 or 4 hours, tell me he would be back next Thursday and then nobody would show up. By that time I thought well maybe he is going to do this, so I canceled my appointments and went back to calling and texting and being told he would come and then not show up and just when I had enough he would show up and do something small then disappear again. It’s now summer 2023 and I’m cleaning up all my yard his guys destroyed and looking at the piers he poured on the west side of the deck by the hot tub and noticed that the post are not even on the piers. I point that out to him and he says he will “fix it”. He sent a guy out who was there for 2 hours and once again left piles of dirt in my rocks I had just fixed but this time it is only about a 5 gallon bucket of dirt. Mike says it all good but I don’t trust it so I call the city inspector who came out and failed those two piers. Mike then was trapped by the inspector face to face with him so he sent 2 guys out with a jack hammer to fix those two piers. It took 3 to 4 weeks to complete these two piers. By this time I turned on my sprinkler system and saw a water leak at the second pier from the east side of the deck. I dug it up to fix the sprinkler and discovered the pier is only 12 inches deep and not 36”. I checked the other 3 piers and found all 4 of the remaining piers that were not already redone were only 12 inches deep and holding up a second story deck and roof. I call and text Mike and Rebecca and get told they will have someone out but nobody shows up and they stop responding for weeks. At this point I called Angi’s list and took over the project myself. I hired subs I got from Angi’s list and elsewhere to finish all the re-work needed and complete the job. Mike’s wife Brenda sends me an email in September 2023 offing me $5,000.00 for two piers being only 12 inches deep and blaming it on sub-contractors they hired. I replied back and told her it needed to be more than 5000 and she agreed to review everything and get back to me. She did not and now I have called Angi’s list again to try and get this done.

Horrible company. They spent 18 months on a 4 week job and didn't even finish. Their work was subpar and not to code. Mike is a smooth talker but backs it with poor quite work. Do not use them.

We are currently ( and very unfortunately) working with them. Over promised and are under delivered. We are 6 weeks into our remodel project and less than 50% has been completed. I would caution anyone who is thinking of working with them.

Excellent from start to finish! Mike Barbee and crew do it right the first time - explaining the process, not taking any shortcuts and going above and beyond just a construction job. Their meticulous attention to detail and creative suggestions to improve our house renovation will make our home fantastic! We will be finished in February - with a new laundry room/pantry, gourmet kitchen, new open space first floor living, remodeled master bathroom and closets, open staircase for 3 floors and a complete basement buildout with full bath and a bar area! Hire New Castle and you will not be disappointed! Amazing company!

It was fine. They were great. I didn't have any issues or anything. The cost of the patio was reasonable. They came out with really good ideas.

It was a great experience they did a fantastic job. Mike and his crew were outstanding

This was easy and all the staff was very helpful from start to finish. The professionalism was impeccable.

Amazing mike is very good and his team is amazing

Work was performed on time and turned out better than we even imagined it would. They are a 1 stop shop and did everything. Have referred them to friends and Family as well.